i don't have anything more to report for you right now. that's what i've been doing. >> all right. good to have you on the "ed show show." rachel maddow starts now. happy friday. have a great weekend. >> thank you. i will. >> thanks for joining us this hour. it was a huge news day in washington. you expect after a national presidential election you get a few days of afterglow letting it all sink in. maybe that's the way it went over the last couple of days, that definitely ended today starting with this. >> thank you. thank you, everybody. thank you.

now that those of us on the campaign trail have had a chance to get a little sleep, it's time to get back to work and there's plenty of work to do. as i said on tuesday night, the american people voted for action not politics as usual. you elected us to focus on your job, not ours. in that spirit i've invited leaders of both parties to the wh white house next week so we can start to build consensus around challenges. at a time when our country is still recovering from the great recession our top priority has to be jobs and growth. that's the focus of the plan that i talked about during the campaign. >> president obama spoke publicly the night that he won his second term when he gave his basic victory speech in chicago. he did speak privately to some of his campaign volunteers in chicago. we likely would have never known about that or seen any tape of

those remarks if not for the fact while the president was speaking he did something which he almost never does. he choked up an started crying when thanking his volunteers. that tape was widely seen. that was not a public event. today's remarks were the first time he's made an official public statement of any kind since election night. you can tell that in part by the huge round of applause as he walked into the room. applause from people invited to attend the speech and a bunch of white house staffers who may have not seen the president and vice president since they earned themselves another term and continuing the white house staffers employment for the next four years. everybody in that room was all very happy to see him. in neez remarks he dpaif today the president proposed that congress act right now to extend the bush tax cuts that are due to expire at the end of the year. the president said democrats and republicans both agree that those tax cuts should be

extended for all income under a quarter million dollars a year. he said congress should pass legislation to do that since everybody agrees on it even if the two sides are likely to keep fighting for what the tax rates should be above a quarter million dollars a year. he's saying let's take action on what we agree on and keep debating on what we disagree on. the president took his pen out and waved it in the air. said he was ready to sign a bill right now. that moment from him was going to be the biggest news in american politics today until 1:45 minutes later when andrea mitchell broke into msnbc programming at 2:51 this afternoon with a remarkable scoop. everybody in washington and politics so focused on figuring out what's going to happen in

the obama second term. there's two components. one is policy and fighting it without the president. the other side of it, the other sie side of what everybody is obsessed with. when andrea mitchell got on air and second david petraeus is resigning, who is going to run on country. this thing that everybody knows is due to change at 2:51 today that stuff started to change already. we're going to speak with richard engle about this in a moment. we'll be talking with andrea about her scoop today. in order to appreciate how big a deal this is, how surprising it

is you recollected know that before this was a reportable story, before it was clear what happened and andrea would report the reasons for saying he was resigning we were hearing all sorts of things about potential reasons why he might be resigning. maybe he had political differences with president obama. he had to resign of because of a huge political disagreement. it was rumored that maybe he had been in talking to take a job with the romney administration. he had been plotting that move behind president obama's back and the disloyalty was the reason he had to go. there was speculation he would have to step down because of something related to the benghazi attack. before this was a reportable story, the theories and speculation about why david petraeus was resigning went all the up to and included the idea maybe he was stepping down to

start running as a republican for president in 2016 right now. until we knew are what happened people were crawling up the walls about this announcement from david petraeus today. andrea pro andrea broke the story and he's leaving because he had an extramarital affair. it was a personal matter. just an unbelievable news day today. joining us now is andrea mitche mitchell. congratulations on this scoop. >> i don't take any pleasure in this that this is a personal tragedy and there are families involved and the men and women of the cia, an agency that has many things to be proud about, many things to be proud about and that is under fire for other reasons. >> are you totally confident that this is the full reason why he resign today and in so

answering are we sure that something like that would force him to resign this job? >> i am. i have that confidence. we have worked for 24 hours on this story. as it was evolving talking to so many people in and out of government, i'm absolutely convinced from all the communications i've had from people directly involved that this was a matter of honor. he felt he had to offer his resignation. the president said to him i want to take 24 hours to think about it an there was a lot involved. i think absent the fbi investigation which we are told by law enforcement officials are likely to lead to any criminal charges. it's an issue that has to be investigated because there's secure communications involved and classification rules but absent that investigation i'm not sure whether he could have soldiers through and not have to

resign. perhaps the president would not have accepted the resignation. diane finestein wish the president had not accepted the resignation. i'm not sure whether the personal transgression although there's a code of honor and he felt strongly that he had screwed up, and that he had to pay the consequences. after 24 hours and consulting his colleagues and other people in the national community, don't know who else, the president agreed and accepted it on the phone in a conversation this afternoon. >> andrea mitchell congratulations on this reporting that led to this scoop. i take your point this is not something to be enthusiastic about having uncovered giving the tragic nature of the news but your reporting on this was cutting edge. thank you for joining us.

>> let's bring in richard engle for more. i know you've been reporting on some other developments about this case. what can you tell us? >> we know the facts and the facts are he said he was going to resign because of this extramarital. he didn't name any names. we know the fbi is conducting an investigation into general petraeus biographer. this is a woman who had close access to general petraeus and the fbi is looking at the access that she had or was trying to have to his e-mail accounts including classified information. there's no indication that she got very far, that any

classified information was divulged and no implication that general petraeus himself was under investigation for passing along any secrets. that's what we learned. >> is it our understanding that the fbi investigation into that side of it is the reason this had to happen today. it was going to become widely known if not publicly known? >> we haven't been able to confirm that direct link. we spoken to law enforcement officials who have made a round about link into this but no one has said that the reason he's stepping down is because there was an fbi investigation into this woman as he's announcing his extramarital affairs. the timing piece of it while this fbi investigation may have been a factor, we haven't been told it was the factor that led to this announcement today.

>> had that not happened, the fact of the affair would that be dangerous enough to somebody in the job as being head of the cia that would force a resignation just because of the threat of blackmail or anything else that might compromise it? >> we did speak to law enforcement officials. they said that blackmail is a concern when ever you have this kind of conversation, when ever you have the cia director who has the nation's secrets on his computer, when you have him talking about extramarital affair, they said blackmail is something they are immediately concerned about. they didn't say in this case they had found any evidence about sfefk attempts pecific at blackmail but that's a concern. when you have someone probing around his e-mail and him talking about an extramarital affair it leaves you in a vulnerable position. >> he's known for his role in

the iraq war and going to afghanistan. how important was petraeus' leadership at the cia? how big a blow is this to the agency? >> he wasn't very popular in certain circles inside the cia. his own personal security staff and this we've heard from multiple sources didn't really like him. they thought he brought in his own people. he was not an insider from the cia and the cia is a bit of an old fashioned club. there was talk -- one person at the cia and one person formerly at the cia put it to me this way. the cia would have had to ask the fbi to look into e-mails that were suspicious.

the cia handles its own security and the fbi would have had to be brought into examine somebody suspiciously trying to pry into the director's account which does not suggest a real warmth within the organization. >> this is an incredible resignation with incredible timing. i have a feeling as we get more detail it's going to become an even more important story. richard engel, thank you. i feel a feeling we'll be talking about this shortly. who's in charge of the republican party now? simple question with a difficult answer. that's coming up. ♪ announcing the all-new 2013 malibu from chevrolet. ♪ with a remarkable new interior featuring the available chevrolet mylink infotainment system. this is where sophisticated styling begins.

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that's going to be an amazing thing to watch. here's just a case in point. it was an overall electoral disaster for republicans to lose the presidency. it was thought to be impossible for them to lose the presidency. nobody since the great depression has been reelected as president with an unemployment rate like the one we have now. but barack obama managed to do it. or the republicans managed to blow it depending how you look at it. just take as a case in point. the tremendous republican disaster in the united states senate. i mean, they had a bad night on tuesday night. but in the senate, it was a sure bet that the republicans were supposed to retake control of the senate this year. a sure bet. they are only defending ten seats. not only did the republicans not retake the senate, the democrats held on to control and increased their margins. that's impossible. that's impossible republican failure in a year like this. and the depth of that failure is bottomless. look at how they failed the more astonishing it is how badly they

failed. not only did mitt romney lose the presidency but in terms of losing republican senate candidates in 11 states, the republican senate candidates did even worse with voters than mitt romney did in those states. mitt romney who lost. the country said no to mitt romney, but they so no, no, no republican senate candidates. it was a catastrophe. who was to blame for that? there is a named person in charge of making sure republicans win senate seats. there's somebody in charge of that. and that specific person in this election obviously failed catastrophically. that person is john cornyn. today the republican party appears ready to respond to his atrocious failure at this job this week. by giving mr. cornyn a promotion. he's getting a reward for nearly shooting the moon in the senate.

for doing as bad as humanly possible. the republican part would like him to be the number two republican in the senate. that's called failing up which is amazing on its own terms. we should also wonder for how the republican party will deal wl the overall question of who their leader is and what they stand for after this electoral drubing. "the washington post" reporting today that the republican party is going to undertake an internal review of what went wrong on tuesday. reportedly take place over the next few weeks and months. spear headed by the republican party. the goal of the review is to determine what went so wrong and how to fix it. good idea. let's review. it's a good idea because the informal process so far of the right trying to figure out what went wrong, that process so far is not going well. republicans have so far decided that hurricane sandy is the

reason mitt romney lost. they have also decided that fact checking is the reason mitt romney lost. karl rove said it's democratic voter suppression is the reason mitt romney lost. there's also a blog post, a piece of comedy written about military votes not being counted. that got the right excited that that was the reason mitt romney lost until they realized that blog post was satire. the republican effort to diagnose what went wrong on tuesday, why mitt romney lost, that effort has not gone very well. take conservative columnists. in the "washington post" today, they took a stab at diagnosing what ails the republicans now. specifically, he assessed why the republican party has an issue with women voters. the problem for republicans is not policy but delicacy. speaking about culturally sensitive and philosophically complex issues with reflection and prudence.

republicans don't have a policy problem when it comes to women's issues. they just speak about their policy preferences with insufficient delicacy. women don't mind that this is how republicans are governing with respect to women's rights they just like to hear that their rights are being repealed. republicans should just find a more delicate way to describe things like transvaginal ultrasounds. you can say that more softly and in cursive, but it's still going to bring protesters out on to the streets to line your walk of shame into the building from which you are trying to govern that way. in ohio mitt romney lost women by 11 points. he lost the state and the presidency. since republicans are saying that the gender gap has nothing to do with policy, you want to know what they have done?

they are going to reintroduce their bill from last session to ban almost all abortions in ohio. that should take care of your problem with women voters. republican party right now finds itself at a cross roads. in the year 2000, we knew george bush's choice would never run for president. not healthy enough, not popular enough, we knew 12 years ago that george bush was coming into office with no heir apparent. since the end of his two terms in office, the most interesting thing in politics has been watching the republican party try to figure out who their leader would be post george bush. we knew it would never be dick cheney. it did not end up being john mccain. it definitely did not end up being sarah palin. for awhile it looked like it would be michael steele. how about john boehner? speaker of the house, previous speakers have been able to fashion that job into a national leadership role.

but john boehner has not done that. no disrespect, but nobody thinks of him as the leader of the republican party. mitt romney did have that job. mitt romney for awhile was the leader of the republican party. we can prove it with evidence. this past june president obama walked out into the rose garden and announced he was going to stop the deportation of kids who were here without papers through no fault of their own. when president obama announced that, beltway reporters immediately went to the republican leaders in congress to see what's the official response from that? what's the official republican position on that issue. here's what the reporters were told by the republicans in congress. "senate republican leader mitch mcconnell said that gop lawmakers will wait for mitt romney to take the lead on immigration policy. most members are interested in what romney has to say about this issue and we're going to withhold judgment until that time." mr. romney was not just the de facto leader of the republican party. he was the stated leader of the republican party.

now that he's lost the presidency, nobody thinks he's going to continue to play the leader of the republican party. mr. romney is likely to move to la jolla, california, to spend more time with his car elevator. but in his short time as leader of the republican party, when he was their presidential nominee, he made leadership decisions about the party. about what the party looks like to the rest of the country. he made leadership decisions particularly in terms of who he would dignify with his embrace. who among everybody in the republican party he, mitt romney, leader of the party would privilege. who he would elevate. he elevated the republican guy who wrote arizona's papers please immigration legal cause. he was his immigration adviser. he made and kept as his national

campaign chairman a man named john sununu, who called president obama lazy and not very bright and said president obama needs to "learn how to be an american." mitt romney's national campaign chairman. mr. romney also elevated and dignified by his presence, i'm sorry to have to say the name, but this guy, donald trump. mitt romney as the leader of the republican party flew out to las vegas to personally receive donald trump's endorsement. mr. romney's running mate paul ryan held special in-person events with donald trump. he did robocalls throughout the campaign and he wasn't freelancing. mitt romney asked him to do it. he did have the leadership reigns of the republican party for a brief moment as their presidential candidate. and what he did with that position of leadership is going to haunt the republican party's prospects of being taken seriously for a long time to come. so the question now, as it has been, who is next? who runs that party?

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when the lines were that long. he says it all worked fine. the right thing happened. florida officials say the lines pop up mostly in big cities with diverse population. they say that as if that's self-explanatory in terms of why you have long lines. but florida officials have you been to l.a.? really big city. we have been getting letters from people who vote in california where they opened tons and tons of polling places that serve much smaller groups of voters than the way you deal with it in florida. in california they vote at the neptune society. they vote in their neighbor's garage. they voted at headquarters of the venice beach lifeguards. californians do not do is stand in line and wait eight hours to vote. after the cake splat of an election in florida and several other states, we're watching for ideas about how to fix our broken election system.

rick hassen says we should declare florida an election disaster area and bring in the fed's. congress should nationalize it and the option of using your thumbprint as i.d. at the polls. the center for justice is recommending that congress require early voting in every state. the same amount and set a standard for number of voting machines so every polling place has enough to go around. if you want to take the long view, hillary clinton's count every vote act is kicking around from 2005. she wanted to declare a federal holiday for voting. she wanted to send money to states for modernizing elections. here's an idea. how about when hillary clinton finishes up time, she and sandra o'connor lead a commission on reform, a national nonpartisan election reform commission. i would be for that. who would be against that? we're getting to a point we can't ignore the failings of our election system. we can't guarantee the vote to citizens and ask citizens to stand in lines that start before

dawn and end after midnight. we can't guarantee them the right to vote and look at pictures and call it good. it's beyond our national conscious to accept this scandal as the state of the franchise. even if you are in the political party that stands to profit from making voting harder. it's beyond our national conscious. and yet because voting is a federal issue and elections are administered by the states, we don't have federal leverage or how they are conducted. the only leverage we have as a country federally is the voting rights act passed in 1965 to make sure african-americans could vote. you want to see the lines at the polls? look at this. bloomberg news dug up this photo today. this is birmingham, alabama, in 1966. this is the first election after congress passed the voting rights act. it puts the states in the old confederacy under special

scrutiny because those states earn special scrutiny on account of their past behavior. the rights act is there to make sure texas doesn't wrongly purge voter rules or mississippi doesn't require new forms of i.d. it's not much, but the voting rights act is more or less what we have in terms of federal leverage. federal enforcement for the right to vote. today on a day that could not have been a bigger news day any way, today the u.s. supreme court announced that they are going to hear a challenge to the voting rights act. the lead plaintiff in the case is shelby county, alabama. just outside birmingham. they would like the special scrutiny to go away. joining me is the acting president and direct council of the legal defense fund. thank you for joining us tonight. >> it's good to be with you. >> you defended the voting rights act the last time it was challenged in 2009. how serious a threat does this case pose? >> it's a serious threat.

any time a core statue is before the supreme court, we need to wake up and focus on it. so we're not happy that the case is back there. we don't think it needed to be there. but we're prepared to defend it as we have successfully in the past. >> is the -- am i right to describe the voting rights act as sort of maximum point of federal leverage over whether or not the states do right in administering our elections? >> i think it's really a core protection. it's a fundamental piece of the whole civil rights canon. so many civil rights statutes are based on the model and the decisions upholding the act. it's really amongst the most important statutes of any kind that our federal legislature has passed. >> i'm struck by the timing here. i don't understand the inner workings to understand why they would make an announcement on this kind of a time frame. i'm struck by the timing just

because of what happened this week. is it just a coincidence? >> it's hard to know. we won't know until we get to the justice's writings about the timing. there was an appeal working to the court. we were looking for a ruling or a decision to hear the case possibly before the election. ultimately, it didn't come until after the election. so it's hard to say what's in the timing. but the fact of the matter is, you never want this type of challenge before the supreme court because this is a core aspect of our nation's march toward progress. >> if you could change election law, if you could at least advise congress about how to change election law, are there things that could be done that would protect the franchise better than it's protected now? >> the first thing we shouldn't do is take down the protections that we have had. what we need are more protections, not fewer. and the recent activity across the country targeted many

communities tells us we need more protection. there are some big things to do. universal registration that allows 18-year-olds to be registered when they have their birthday. something modelled on selective service registration applies across the board. that would be helpful. expand early voting. let's not have those lines because we have a bigger period when people can exercise their franchise. that would be important. and another thing we saw this time in the elections that we don't need to have is this idea that people can go to the polls and challenge voters on election day. that sort of a piece of the voting story and let's not have people there intimidating voters. challenges can be done long before election time and let the folks that administer elections have everybody vote. >> let's take the piece about early voting. that's on people's minds now because of the restrictions. the republican officials that restricted voting never made an argument for why. they just said we have enough time.

we have enough time. they never made a case for why they needed to get rid of the time. what about the division of labor between congress saying we ought to have more early voting in every state in the country and the states asserting their own rights to run elections how they see fit? how do you see that breaking down? >> in a sense that comes back to the voting rights act. they used to use against minority voters in birmingham and other places was this idea of states rights. they can administer their elections and interpret the constitution in the way they see fit and there wasn't a uniform standard. it was a definitive answer to that question. the constitution must be followed and it's not for the states to pick and choose. it was an important turning point. so i think there is a federal role to play, certainly in federal elections. what we want as americans is more voting. we want to invite people to the party. not dissuade them.

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normally if you get hurt, the worst case scenario, you have to go to the hospital. but when the hospital is the thing that's hurt, then what do you do? right now in new york there are three hospitals so damaged they have yet to reopen since hurricane sandy. that includes the veterans hospital in manhattan, which as of this past week, looked like this. that's a lot of water where water is not supposed to be. according to v.a. officials, the only mri machine at the hospital is flooded and lost.

the fire suppression system, the mechanical systems were all knocked out at the veterans hospital. the basement and ground floor were flooded. one tiny silver lining, the building was reportedly structurally sound. it doesn't need to be knocked down. when they visited the damaged hospital today, the agency couldn't say when they expect the hospital to reopen. so veterans are being rerouted to brooklyn and queens. the v.a.'s regional office in new york is also closed down still due to damage from the storm. inside it is a mess. the v.a. veterans groups are doing what they can. like this mobile center they have set up to provide some of the counsels and jobs help the v.a. would normally provide from their shut-down facilities. they set up this temporary pharmacy at the damaged v.a. hospital. it was taken today. the storm hit last monday. the impact of this storm hitting veterans in particular so

directly with this double whammy, the v.a. office still being shut down, it's hard to fathom. but this sunday is veterans day, which means more than ever it's time to fathom it and give props for the way veterans have been dealing with this particular hardship that hit them specifically in this storm. veterans have been volunteering to help everybody else. that's iraq and afghanistan veterans in the rockaways. there's a group of veterans from all over the country that volunteers as a group wherever and whenever a natural disaster hits. they have been in the region hit by the storm for over a week now. this sunday hundreds more are expected to join them cleaning up this devastated part of the country. that storm relief effort is what veterans are doing on veterans day, which is the day we're supposed to honor them. if you want to help out yourself or donate or want to attend a veterans day parade this sunday,

we have posted links you might find helpful for doing that, including special links for veterans who are here in the storm-affected areas who have been making due with this incredible double whammy of no v.a. hospital for the foreseeable future and no regional office. happy veterans day, everybody. it's an unusually tough one in this part of the country. we'll be right back ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ by earning a degree in the field maof counseling or psychologyth from capella university, health. you'll have the knowledge to make a difference in the lives of others. let's get started at capella.edu. but with advair, i'm breathing better. so now i can be in the scene. advair is clinically proven to help significantly improve lung function. unlike most copd medications, advair contains both an anti-inflammatory and a long-acting bronchodilator working together to help improve your lung function all day. advair won't replace fast-acting inhalers for sudden symptoms and should not be used more than twice a day. people with copd taking advair may have a higher chance of pneumonia. advair may increase your risk of osteoporosis and some eye problems. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition or high blood pressure before taking advair.

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his house seat in missouri. so come january todd akin will be gone from national politics. until then consider this guy, this guy who has the magical qualities of rapist sperm, this guy will retain his house on the house science committee. the republican party put todd akin on the science committee in congress. also, old roscoe bartlett who just lost his seat. he's the one who said rape hardly ever causes pregnancies. he's quite sure that's true. the republicans put todd akin and roscoe bartlett. such is the republican's respect for science. and since the republicans did hold on to the house this year, they still get to determine the membership of the house science committee.

do you want to know who they're going to put in charge of it? >> we don't know what those other cycles were caused by in the past. could be dinosaur flatulence or who knows. but we do know that the co2 in the past had its time when it was greater as well. >> dana rohrabachar. they might choose this guy. >> co2 is a natural case. now, does this mean that all of us very to put catalytic converters on our noses so there's no co2 escapes every time we exhale. >> he went on to say it's propaganda that people think there are carbon emissions. when he said that where he was when he was saying that was at

the heartland institute. they put up these billboards saying if you believe in global warming, you're the unibomber. so those are the two people the republicans are choosing between to from the house of representatives for science. >> i've come to understand that all that stuff i was taught about evolution and embryology and the big bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. and it's lies to try and keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior. >> embryology is lies from the pit of hell. that's paul brown of georgia and on tuesday he won back his house seat and therefore his place on the house science committee. there was no suspense about his unopposed.

but in a development worthy of national recognition, i need to tell you that nearly 4,000 of paul brown's constituents went into the voting booth on tuesday and decided that just voting for unopposed paul braun or just not voting for anybody in that race, nearly 4,000 people in his district decided they would write in a worthy opponent for him. nearly 4,000 in his district wrote in the name charles darwin. instead of voting for the evolution is lies from the pit of hill guy. which is maybe as good a reminder as we are ever going to get in this country that's not just when things seem dire that we should hope for improvement. sometimes even when things go great, good-bye todd akin, sometimes there is still room for yet more good news on top of something you already thought was pretty good. even great days sometimes get better. even something, for example, as great as a whiskey cocktail can

be improved. so for a cocktail moment, here's how you make an improved whiskey cocktail. this is a jerry thomas drink that dates back to the 1870s. it's now what we call an old fashioned. whiskey with sugar and bitters. an improved whiskey cocktail is an improvement on that. the improvement is the addition of a couple of other sweetening agents in very small proportions. so we start with absinthe. this is a weird preparation technique, put a little bit of absinthe in a glass, after i swirl it around and coat the glass with it, i'm going to throw it out. you don't need a lot of it. you just want the absinthe in

the middle of the glass. now my glass is prepared. while i'm doing this other part, will you put ice in there? we've got absinthe-rinsed glass. in terms of making the rest of the dock till, two dashes of bitters, a quarter of an ounce of this maraschino. you want a quarter ounce of this, which is not very much. and a quarter ounce of sugar water, otherwise known as simple syrup. sugar and water in equal volume. there we go. never pour it back in the thing like i just did. now, the whiskey part. two ounces of rye whiskey. if you can get bonded rye, which means it's 100 proof, you'll thank me.

all right. so two ounces of rye. a quarter ounce of maraschino, a quarter sugar, two dashes of bitters, ice. and this is one of those drinks that you stir instead of shake. and then you strain it into your absinthe rinsed glass. and the finale, what i like to think of as the part where paul brown's constituents write in charles darwin for him, is the lemon twist. the improved whiskey cocktail. sometimes even really good things can get better. that does it for us tonight. il